jewish identity in early modern germany,

JEWISH IDENTITY IN EARLY MODERN GERMANY

For JuliMy best friend, my inspiration, and the love of my life

In memory of my beloved grandparentsHerman and Eva Solomon of blessed memory

Jewish Identity in Early Modern Germany

Memory, Power and Community

DEAN PHILLIP BELLSpertus Institute of Jewish Studies, USA

Dean Phillip Bell 2007

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

Dean Phillip Bell has asserted his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing CompanyGower House Suite 420Croft Road 101 Cherry StreetAldershot Burlington, VT 05401-4405Hampshire GU11 3HR USAEngland

Ashgate website: http://www.ashgate.com

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Bell, Dean Phillip, 1967 Jewish identity in early modern Germany: memory, power and community 1. Jews Germany Identity 2. Jews Germany History 10961800 3. Jews Historiography 4. Jews Germany Social conditions 16th century 5. Jews Germany Social conditions 17th century 6. Collective memory Germany History 7. Germany Ethnic relations History I. Title 943.00492409031

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bell, Dean Phillip, 1967 Jewish identity in early modern Germany: memory, power and community / by Dean Phillip Bell. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references.1. Jews Germany History 10961800. 2. Jews Germany Historiography. 3. Judaism Historiography. 4. History Religious aspects Judaism. 5. Memory Religious aspects Judaism. 6. Reformation Germany History. 7. Germany Ethnic relations. I. Title.

DS135.G31B447 2007 943.004924dc22

2006033074

ISBN 978-0-7546-5897-9Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire.

Contents

Acknowledgements vii

Introduction ix

1 Memory, History, and Jewish Identity 1

2 Reconsidering Early Modern German Jewish Memory and History 19

3 Community, Memory, and Governance 35

4 Jewish Social Organization: The Role of Memory, Power, and Honor 67

5 Politics, Polemics, and History: Assessing Jewish Identity 99

6 From Law to Legend: Narrating Jewish and Christian Encounters 131

Conclusion 153

Bibliography 157

Index 179

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Acknowledgements

This work has evolved over many years and has benefited from the comments and insights of many people in diverse settings. In the last several years I have presented my findings at a number of conferences and to seminars at the University of Chicago, University of California at Berkeley, University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign, University of Illinois at Chicago, Western Michigan University, and Spertus College. I am grateful for and have benefited tremendously from the comments from all of my colleagues in these settings and in my courses at Spertus. I am also indebted to my colleagues at Spertus Institutes Asher Library and the Newberry Library, who have supplied me with what must have been an endless request of rare, obscure, or voluminous resources. This work would never have come to be without their assistance.

I express here my appreciation for the very helpful comments by the anonymous evaluators at Ashgate, who obviously invested a great deal of time in reading the manuscript and who supplied me with remarkably nurturing and constructive suggestions. Thomas Gray, Commissioning Editor at Ashgate, deserves special thanks for all his encouragement and for his assistance with this project.

I thank particularly my friends and colleagues, Stephen Burnett, Constantin Fasolt, Hal Lewis, Lynda Crawford, and Miriam Ben-Yoseph, who have toiled over various drafts of this book. Their patience and encouragement have been remarkable. I owe a great debt of gratitude to Dave and Rheta Harrison for all their support, and particular indebtedness to my father and mother, Edward and Myrna Bell, for all their love, patience, and encouragement for me and for my various and sundry historical musings over many years. Finally, and most importantly, I thank my wife Juli and my children Malkaya, Chanan, and Ronia. They have afforded me a great deal of time and flexibility to think about and write this book, and though they may never realize it, they inspire me in all that I do.

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Introduction

In this book I present a variety of examples of how Jews in early modern Germany remembered and narrated the past. Although it has been argued that Jews possessed little in the way of formal historiographical traditions in this period, what follows demonstrates that Jews nevertheless, or precisely because, co-opted the past both consciously and unconsciously for many reasons, and in various and surprising ways. Responding to the particular conditions in which they found themselves in early modern German and Jewish culture, Jews fashioned the past for both internal and external purposescreating communal identity in contemporary situations, while seeking connections to a broader Jewish past. While Jews related past events to present circumstances in paradigmatic ways that have been seen as traditionally religious, this study reveals that Jews also shaped the past to address both contemporary internal concerns and external relations.

This book engages, but then redirects, important discussions by recent historians regarding the nature of time and the construction and role of memory and history in pre-modern Europe and pre-modern Jewish civilization. I argue that even when they did not write formal histories, Jews maintained a significant and lively engagement with the past that operated at various levels and divided the past into generally coherent, if long and at times changeable, units. Some of these units were based on the experiences and perspectives of individual Jews, individual communities, or clusters of communities. Some had basis in actual experiences with the past, while others were related to the lore of particular communities, or the broader religious currents and traditions of Judaism. In the end, however, all of these memories helped to define and shape early modern German Jewry.

The sources examined in this book are diverse. Any form of German Jewish expression in the early modern period that contains reference to the past or past events is open to investigation. This includes, for example, chronicles, liturgical works, books of customs, memorybooks, biblical commentaries, rabbinic responsa literature, and community ledgers. Throughout, a broad comparative basis is offered, particularly through the juxtaposition of early modern Christian engagement with the past.

The period covered here is roughly 15001700. These dates were chosen in large part because of the scope of the sources available. There were, however, additional reasons for selecting these parameters. These dates bound important German developments, such as the Reformation, forcing us to consider how more general conditions in Germany impacted the way that Jews engaged the past. But this period also had real meaning for internal Jewish developments, demarcating the boundaries of significant demographic and social shifts within the Jewish communities themselves. Throughout this book the beginning and end dates of investigation are taken rather fluidly, so that late fifteenth- and very early eighteenth-century materials are also examined as they help to clarify developments or trends.

Jewish Identity in Early Modern Germanyx

A critical issue has been the selection of the geographical span of this work. One cannot speak of early modern Germany without immediately running into the complex question of just what Germany was. Was it defined by linguistic patterns, political territories, cultural inclinations, religious beliefs, or something still different? Even within Germany, political borders might cross traditional ecclesiastical divisions, so that the duchy of Bavaria and the Rhine Palatinate, for example, each lay in seven different dioceses, while the two Saxonies were in eleven.1 Throughout this research, I have opted to include the broader German Empire, described by Johannes Cochlaeus (14791552), the anti-Reformation humanist, in his Brevis Germaniae descriptio of 1512: I believe that no region in Europe extends further than Germany It is enclosed in the south by Italy and Dalmatia [Yugoslavia]; in the east by Hungary and Poland; in the north by the Baltic and the North Sea; and in the west by France and the English channel.2 While one could devise many different definitions for early modern Germany, it is this broad geographical definition that I have selected to bound the investigation that follows.

I should note that even for early modern Jews, the question of what was German could be complicated. On the one hand, many historians have found increasing evidence to suggest that Ashkenaz had very distinct boundaries and meanings in the world-view of early modern Jews.3 Important synods, for example, stipulated the political borders within German Jewry as well as the central location of primary German Jewish courts and tax-collection centers. Restrictions were placed on Jews seeking to take litigation from a particular region, especially crossing over into Italy or Poland. On the other hand, it has become equally clear that while Jews absorbed non-Jewish culture they also absorbed non-German Jewish customs, practices, and outlooks as well. There is a growing body of literature demonstrating the connection between German and Polish Jewish study and customs and between Italian and German Jewish legal decision-making processes. At the same time, Jews traveled broadly and maintained important business and familial connections throughout a very disperse geographical reach. For this reason, the Jewish community of Prague has been included in this study. While Prague is not really part of the German

1 Thomas A. Brady, Jr. The Holy Roman Empires Bishops on the Eve of the Reformation, in Robert J. Blast and Andrew C. Gow (eds), Continuity and Change: The Harvest of Late Medieval and Reformation History: Essays Presented to Heiko A. Oberman on his 70th Birthday (Leiden, 2000), pp. 2047, here at p. 31, n. 44.

2 Jrn Sieglerschmidt, Social and Economic Landscapes, in Sheilagh Ogilvie (ed.), Germany: A New Social and Economic History, volume II: 16391800 (London, 1996), pp. 138, here at p. 2.

3 See Joseph Davis, The Reception of the Shulhan Arukh and the Formation of Ashkenazic Jewish Identity, AJS Review 26:2 (2002): 25176. Davis writes that, A variety of answers, some complimentary, some contradictory, were offered to these questions by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Jews during the conflict over the reception of the Shulhan Arukh. It was suggested that the Ashkenazim were the descendants of a group of common ancestors; that they were the Jews who lived in Germany, Ashkenaz; that they were those who lived throughout Central and Eastern Europe; that they were Yiddish-speaking Jews; or even, for the purposes of Jewish law, that they were exactly those Jews whose communities accepted the authority of Isserles code (p. 253).

Introduction xi

experience documented in most of the sources, it is clear that there were extremely significant connections between the Jews in Germany and Prague and, what is more, within the context of political developments in early modern Germany, Prague played a very crucial role. In addition, the very large and important Jewish community in Prague was responsible for a good deal of intellectual and cultural productivity, and the sources produced by Jews living there in this period expand the scope of material available for consideration.

What follows is divided into six chapters and a brief conclusion. Chapter 1 reviews the nature of memory and history as discussed in general and Jewish scholarship, with particular emphasis on the diversity of ways in which narration of the past could be used for various political, social, and religious purposes. Chapter 2 turns more specifically to early modern German Jewish notions of memory and history as expressed in theological constructs as well as complex understandings of temporality. Here I argue that while early modern Jews frequently employed traditional paradigms in order to make sense of the past, they also narrated the past in order to forge communal identity and to mediate relations with the non-Jewish world.

Chapters 3 and 4 discuss various Jewish uses of the past that had significant internal communal value. In Chapter 3, I consider the role of memory in communal governance. After a review of general and Jewish demography in early modern Germany and the structure of Jewish communities, I examine Jewish engagement with the past in community ledgers (pinkasim) and local and regional customs (minhagim). I conclude that the past narrated by Jews had great communal significanceat certain times confirming traditions and at other times challenging regnant norms and initiating serious communal change. Chapter 4 expands this discussion by considering the social organization of the Jewish communities and highlighting the role of wealth, prestige, and honor in Jewish communal politics. Here I investigate several memorybooks and autobiographical writings for what they reveal about social order and communal power. Throughout, I provide comparisons with the use of memory and history in early modern German Christian writings.

Chapters 5 and 6 chart Jewish engagement with the past as a tool for confronting and, at times, contesting external authority. In Chapter 5, the role of history and memory as devices of political contestation are placed particularly within the context of the Reformation and the growth of general historical production in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. On the one hand, Jews narrated the past in order to recalibrate historical reckoning to include their history and to re-inscribe themselves as the Chosen People of God. On the other hand, such narrations also provided a moral yardstick with which to upbraid the Jews themselves. In Chapter 6, I consider the role of the past in the process of legal decision-making, the engagement with mythic time and magical stories, and the solidification of origin stories, all of which helped to re-situate Jews in early modern German society.

In the end, this book is about the narration of the past by Jews living throughout the early modern or old German Empire. But, it is a book, it is hoped, that will have comparative value for both Jewish and Christian history as well. It reveals the complexities of early modern German Jewish communal life as well as the multi-faceted relations that Jews had with German Christians. Fundamentally, this book challenges the assumption that Jews did not think about the past in any more than

Jewish Identity in Early Modern Germanyxii

typological ways and it asserts that Jews, despite frequent and often bitter anti-Judaism and anti-Jewish activity, maintained important autonomy in the governance of their own communities and significant power in their relations with the outside world. In crafting their memories, early modern Jews were remarkably sophisticated and resilient. They remembered for many purposes and with much subtlety. Their narration of these memories allows a marvelous window into their world and perceptions.

Chapter 1

Memory, History, and Jewish Identity

Before I turn to the early modern sources themselves, it is instructive to review the recent literature on memory and history for what such theoretical discussions may suggest generally about the understanding and function of the past. First we summarize the important work of Maurice Halbwachs and Pierre Nora on memory and history. The work of these scholars and others serves as context for a discussion of recent approaches to Jewish memory and history, especially the work of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi. After a consideration of some of the responses to Halbwachs and Yerushalmi in particular I examine broadly the nature and use of history in the Middle Ages.

This quick overview indicates that despite their apparent theoretical differences, memory and history exist on a continuum of engagement with the past, which functions in several ways. The narration of this pastwhether as memory or historyhelps to dictate moral standards, it mediates politics and is itself a form of power, and it reinforces tradition while simultaneously offering the tools to bring about sweeping changes. The vast and growing scholarly literature on memory and history also argues for an important connection between discussions of the past and communal identity and suggests that many significant changes associated with the early modern period can be understood by examining early modern narratives of the past.

Memory and History

In a now classic study, first published in 1950 but discussed increasingly more recently, Maurice Halbwachs argued that memory and history have very different characteristics and are in a sense in opposition to each other.1 In that work, Halbwachs set much of the current agenda for discussions about the relation of memory and history as well as the nature of collective memory.2 His pioneering concepts have raised significant questions for historians and, as we will see below, the ire of some scholars who prefer less rigid oppositions.

1 See Mircea Eliade, who in the late 1940s raised the question of the ahistorical nature of popular memory: The anhistorical character of popular memory, the instability of collective memory to retain historical events and individuals except insofar as it transforms them into archetypesthat is, insofar as it annuls all their historical and personal peculiaritiespose a series of new problems, which we are obliged to set aside for the moment (Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return, trans. Willard R. Trask (New York, 1959 (orig., 1949)), p. 46).

2 See the evaluation of Amos Funkenstein, in his Perceptions of Jewish History(Berkeley, 1993), pp. 4, 89.

Jewish Identity in Early Modern Germany2

According to Halbwachs there is an important distinction between memory and history. General history, he argued, starts only when tradition ends and the social memory is fading or breaking up. So long as a remembrance continues to exist, it is useless to set it down in writing or otherwise fix it in memory. Likewise the need to write the history of a period, a society, or even a person is only aroused when the subject is already too distant in the past to allow for the testimony of those who preserve some remembrance of it.3

History, in this interpretation, is written at points of social disintegration. It is a distant, written reflection of un-experienced events. Whereas memory is continuous and ongoing, history assumes, even demands, that everything is transformed from one period to the next. While memory is a depository and safeguard of tradition, history is merely a record of events. Memory is living, history a detached record of things no longer alive. Memory is particular in focus, but history has the capacity to treat the universal.4

According to Halbwachs, our memory of the past is composed of two kinds of elements: those from a common domain (a social or external memory) and those remembrances that are ours alone (personal and internal memory). This dichotomy is not so simple, for while individuals remember within a broader social context their memories may also vary based on their own experiences and orientations. According to Halbwachs:

While the collective memory endures and draws strength from its base in a coherent body of people, it is individuals as group members who remember. While these remembrances are mutually supportive of each other and common to all, individual members still vary in the intensity with which they experience them. I would readily acknowledge that each memory is a viewpoint on the collective memory, that this viewpoint changes as my relationships to other milleus change. Therefore, it is not surprising that everyone does not draw on the same part of this common instrument. In accounting for that diversity, however, it is always necessary to revert to a combination of influences that are social in nature.5

In this assessment, there is a common memory base that is tapped into, processed, and experienced differently by different individuals within unique and varying contexts. Individual and communal memory, therefore, exist in a complex and multidirectional relationship, in which individual memory simultaneously is affected by and contributes to collective memory.6

3 Maurice Halbwachs, The Collective Memory, trans. Francis J. Ditter, Jr. and Vida Yazdi Ditter (New York, 1980 (orig., 1950)), pp. 789. Halbwachs notes as well that, by the term history we must understand, then, not a chronological sequence of events and dates, but whatever distinguishes one period from all others, something of which books and narratives generally give us only a very schematic and incomplete picture (p. 57).

4 Ibid., pp. 8082. 5 Ibid., p. 48.6 Pierre Nora writes that, Memory wells up from groups that it welds together, which

is to say, as Maurice Halbwachs observed, that there are as many memories as there are groups, that memory is by nature multiple yet specific; collective and plural yet individual. By contrast, history belongs to everyone and to no one and therefore has a universal vocation.

Memory, History, and Jewish Identity 3

The influential French historian Pierre Nora, in a seminal work examining French national history, has presented a similar tension between what he understands as memory and history.7 Nora argues for a differentiation between memory, which is concrete and so rooted in space and structure, and history, which is rooted in temporality and so is relative. History is about change and memory about continuity, albeit at times shifting continuity.

Nora posits a distinction between memory and history that revolves around a divide between the sacred and non-religious. Memory situates remembrance in a sacred context. History is critical, analytical, and so nonreligious. It is not simply that being critical and analytical are at odds with religion or that history is related to, or a part of a process of, secularization. More significantly, for Nora, is the observation that history has to do with an external reflection as opposed to a true core. Nora writes that We no longer celebrate the nation, but we study the nations celebrations.8

The less we are able to experience from within, the more we need external props and tangible reminders of that which no longer exists except qua memory.9 The trace, Nora writes, negates the sacred but retains its aura,10 so as history is more critical, it is simultaneously also more detached. Memory, while steeped in hazy impressions, symbolic details, emotion, and magic, holds the key to the core, the true or real society that history only knows by separation and reflection.

But Nora reads modern memory as more akin to history than traditional memory. He sounds a note of concern, consequently, when he writes that the acceleration of history thus brings us face to face with the enormous distance that separates real memory from history and an integrated memory from our form of memory, which is nothing but history, a matter of sifting and sorting.11 Indeed, for Nora, the modern transformation of memory marks a decisive shift from the historical to the psychological, from the social to the individual, from the concrete message to its subjective representation, from repetition to remembrance.12 Modernity, in this

See Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, under the direction of Pierre Nora, 3 vols, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (New York, 199698 (orig., 198492)), p. 3.

7 Nora writes: Memory is life, always embodied in living societies and as such in permanent evolution, subject to the dialectic of remembering and forgetting, unconscious of the distortions to which it is subject, vulnerable in various ways to appropriation and manipulation, and capable of lying dormant for long periods only to be suddenly reawakened. History, on the other hand, is the reconstruction, always problematic and incomplete, of what is no longer. Memory is always a phenomenon of the present; history is a representation of the past. Memory, being a phenomenon of emotion and magic, accommodates only those facts that suit it. It thrives on vague, telescoping reminiscences, on hazy general impressions or specific symbolic details. It is vulnerable to transferences, screen memories, censorings, and projections of all kinds. History, being an intellectual, nonreligious activity, calls for analysis and critical discourse. Memory situates remembrance in a sacred context. History ferrets it out; it turns whatever it touches into prose. Ibid.

8 Ibid., p. 7.9 Ibid., p. 8.10 Ibid., p. 9.11 Ibid., p. 2.12 Ibid., p. 11.


representation, becomes shorn of collectivity, the past, and in a certain sense, reality itself. This interpretation rings of a tone of modern alienation. Similarly, Noras concepts of history, modernity, and the nineteenth-century nation state fundamentally shape his argument, and lead us to ask how his assessment might or might not work for societies or communities that were not formed in the same national context.

It is important to note, however, that for Nora there is some similarity between memory and history. Both are subject to manipulation. Memory can be appropriated and refashioned and is selective. History can be problematic and incomplete reconstruction; different motives and perspectives affect the nature and scope of the representation we call history.

Approaches to Jewish Memory and History

How have memory and history been assessed in Jewish historiography? Traditionally, the role of memory throughout Jewish history has been seen as important; formal history, however, has been cast as unimportant and often non-existent. Bernard Lewis, the renowned historian of Jews under Islam, for example, some thirty years ago noted that Jewish historiographic literature in the Middle Ages was sparse and poor.13 The purpose of historical writingin the form of martyrologies, heroic narratives,14

commemorations,15 surviving custom and law,16 the history of scholarship and the succession of rabbis and pupils and teacherswas to give medieval Jews the ability to stiffen the endurance of the survivors and to legitimize the authority of the rabbis.17

Lewis contended that with no country, state, or dynastic focus, Jews lacked any real need to write history: the vital history was already fixed in Scripture, literature, and the calendar, and so the poverty of Jewish historiography was due not to neglect but to positive rejection.18 According to this line of thinking, critical history would develop only with the disaffection with the past and the desire to control the future.19

Medieval Jewish historiography was, for Lewis, poor, reactionary and intended as a means by which to continue religious traditions.

The very topic of Jewish memory and history has received a great deal of attention since the Shoah. In the last quarter century in particular the floodgates opened for the production of a variety of scholarly investigations into the broader ways and purposes for which Jews remember the past. With some of the same assumptions as those forwarded by Lewis, and steeped in the theoretical orientation of Halbwachs and the emerging discussions surrounding Nora and his school, the prominent and ground-breaking historian Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, in a slender volume of published lectures from the early 1980s, set the stage for much of the subsequent discussion of Jewish memory and history. Yerushalmi concretized some

13 Bernard Lewis, History: Remembered, Recovered, Invented (Princeton, 1975), p. 21.14 Ibid., p. 44.15 Ibid., pp. 45ff.16 Ibid., pp. 52ff.17 Ibid., p. 22.18 Ibid., p. 23.19 Ibid., p. 56.


general observations about Jewish historiography and the relationship between memory and history, while forwarding an outline of the production and role of history and historiographical writing in Jewish tradition. In the pages that follow, I will restate Yerushalmis position, review some of the criticism and implications of his arguments, and then set a broader contexta context in which Yerushalmi was both participant and productfor the consideration of early modern German Jewish memory and history.

For Yerushalmi, it was ancient Israel that first assigned a decisive significance to history and thus forged a new world-view .20 The new perception was based in Israelite faith, by which the crucial encounter between man and the divine shifted away from the realm of nature and the cosmos to the plane of history, conceived now in terms of divine challenge and human response.21 Ancient Israel knew God for what He did in history; memory, therefore, became a central occupation.22 But even this remembering was not purely historical. The entire past was not the goal. Rather the idea of recollecting Jewish selection and uniqueness was central. Memory flowed in ancient Israel in two channels according to Yerushalmi, ritual and recital.23

Yerushalmi concludes that there is a paradox in Judaism in that although memory of the past has always been a central aspect of Jewish experience, and indeed, Jews have been divinely commanded to remember, it has not been the historian who has recorded that past, at least not before modern secular times.24

In the rabbinic period, the rabbis did not seek to write a new history of the biblical period, they simply sought meaning in the history they received. Nor did they demonstrate much interest in recording contemporary events.25 In the interval between the destruction of the Temple and the future redemption, the primary Jewish task was taken to be responding to the biblical challenge of becoming a holy people. While the biblical past was known and the messianic future assured, the time in between was obscure and needed to be understood according to a previously revealed pattern. The rabbis, therefore, were comfortable in making time elastic. They did not see anachronism as a flaw, nor did they see historical reckoning as of great value.

This trend, according to Yerushalmi, continued through the Middle Ages. Jews devoted a great deal of time to the position of the Jewish people in history, of ideas of Jewish history, of often profound and sometimes daring reflections on exile and redemption, but, with the exception of the chain of tradition literature, expressed comparatively little interest in recording the ongoing historical experience of the Jews.26 As for Lewis, this lack of historiographical interest was not for Yerushalmi a flaw, but perhaps reflected a degree of self-sufficiency within Jewish culture itself.

20 Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (Seattle, 1982), p. 8.

21 Ibid.22 Ibid., p. 9. See also Eliade, Cosmos and History, p. 106.23 Ibid., pp. 11, 15.24 Ibid., p. xiv.25 Ibid., p. 18.26 Ibid., p. 31.


Jews did, however, create some historical narratives in the Middle Ages. But these typically focused on the distant past until the destruction of the Second Temple or on the most recent of events.27 New events, however, were generally assimilated within tried and familiar archetypes.28 There are sufficient clues, Yerushalmi argues, to indicate that what was suddenly drawn up from the past was not a series of facts to be contemplated at a distance, but a series of situations into which one could somehow be existentially drawn.29 For medieval and rabbinic Jews, the past provided a blueprint against which recent and contemporary life might be understood.

Yerushalmi emphasizes the ritual and liturgical nature of Jewish history in the Middle Ages, noting that Jewish history was neither exclusively cyclical nor linear.30

He divides medieval Jewish histories into four categories: selihot, or penitential prayersthe religious and literary response to historical catastrophe inserted into the liturgy of the synagogue;31 memorial books, particularly kept by Ashkenazic Jews, that preserved the names of those for whose souls communal prayers were to be offered in the house of worship;32 second Purims, instituted in Jewish communities to commemorate a deliverance from some danger or persecution;33

and the institution of specific fast days, which recalled those more bitter occasions when there was no deliverance.34

The typologies isolated by Yerushalmi as reflective of medieval Jewish historical thinking share a number of elements: they were largely in response to persecution; they were liturgical, ritual, and cyclicalnot historicalremembrances of past events retold primarily within the synagogue at set times of the year (that is, they were religious and so, by many scholars definition, not historiographical); and, although they could reflect broader conditions, they were frequently related to local or regional events. According to Yerushalmi, although these remembrances could contain historical information they more often simply preserved essential memory of an event without necessarily preserving its historical details.35 As such, the methods and forms of memory produced in the Jewish Middle Ages were essentially reactive, religious, and local, at the same time that they were paradigmatic and not specific.36

For Yerushalmi, the situation seems to have changed subtly but significantly in the sixteenth century.37 The move to a more genuinely historiographical orientation at that time Yerushalmi attributes to the tragic event of the Spanish expulsion at the

27 Ibid., p. 34.28 Ibid., p. 36.29 Ibid., p. 44.30 Ibid., p. 41.31 Ibid., p. 45.32 Ibid., p. 46.33 Ibid., pp. 46ff.34 Ibid., pp. 48ff.35 Ibid., p. 51.36 For a discussion on the paradigmatic nature of pre-modern religious and historical

thinking in general, see Eliade, Cosmos and History, pp. 34ff. In discussing the regeneration of time, Eliade notes an element of regeneration through repetition of an archetypal act, usually of the cosmogonic act and the abolition of concrete time (p. 85).

37 Ibid., p. 57.


end of the fifteenth century.38 In this period the history of post-biblical Jews and the history of the nations, particularly contemporary ones, were assigned positions of prominence.39 The shift to critical, historiographical thinking was, according to Yerushalmi, however, not completed until the modern, secular, period. During the sixteenth century instead of history, other outlets, such as Lurianic kabbalah eventually served to provide a psychological solution to the trauma of the expulsion.

In modernity, the knowledge of history became more desirable, and with the Wissenschaft des Judentums, there were for the first time, according to Yerushalmi, no apologies for history. Judaism, in a sense, was forced to prove its validity to the world and reveal and justify itself historically. Such an effort to reconstruct the Jewish past, however, began only with a sharp break in the continuity of Jewish life, marked by assimilation without and collapse from within, in which Jewish historiography was divorced from Jewish collective memory. Similar to the position taken by Nora, history in the modern period, for Yerushalmi, became the faith of the fallen, particularly as the uniqueness of the Jews and divine providence in history were being challenged by Jews themselves.

Reassessing Memory and History

In response to Yerushalmis work, a lively debate ensued, with many embracing Yerushalmis synthesis, and a number of scholars challenging various aspects of Yerushalmis approach, assumptions, and conclusions. One reviewer, for example, writing with an eye toward Zionism and modern Israel, criticized Yerushalmi for suggesting that historical writing was a weak replacement for the fading memory that had more traditionally bound society together. Arguing that modern historiographical research was a positive and constructive force, this reviewer contended that new and deeper knowledge of history led to richer identity and that, in any event, the distant past known to modernity has little to distinguish it from the distant past known previously. The same reviewer made the more general criticism, that Yerushalmi considered only canonical historical writing, thereby ignoring a vast corpus of formal and informal historical works.40 (Despite such criticism, most subsequent studies have continued to focus on more traditional historiographical works.41)

The eminent historian of Italian Jewry Robert Bonfil has also taken exception to Yerushalmis work, challenging the very assumption that the Jewish historiographical production of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was rich at all. Bonfil asserts that the early modern period witnessed a sharpening of opposing dichotomies (Jewish and Christian) and an increase in the sense of the lachrymose in Jewish writings. The subject matter of history as conceived in the early modern period was largely political and military; however, the Jewish experience of the time could

38 Ibid., pp. 589.39 Ibid., pp. 623.40 See the review of Zakhor by Yaakov Shavit in Studies in Zionism 6 (1985): 14347.41 See, for example, Reuven Michael, Jewish Historiography from the Renaissance to

the Modern Time (Jerusalem, 1993) [Hebrew].


supply no such history.42 According to Bonfil, therefore, radical change in Jewish historiography could only be achieved by recourse to two methods. Either Jews could be transformed into actors in political and military history, or the very conception of history could be changed. But, Bonfil concludes, the former was not possible under current conditions and the latters time had not yet come.43

Other scholars also responded to and challenged Yerushalmis assumptions and conclusions. Amos Funkenstein argued that although one might indeed claim that pre-modern Jews had no true historiography, it would be a mistake to claim that they had no historical consciousness.44 The implication was that although pre-modern Jews did not write formal histories, they might nevertheless have still thought historically. Similarly, in the late 1980s Ivan Marcus also made a very significant contribution to this discussion. Marcus distinguished between historiography more specifically and narratives about the past more broadly.

According to Marcus, narratives of the past written by Sephardic Jews were mainly concerned with the rabbinic elites. Ashkenazic texts, on the other hand, generally described a broader social spectrum.45 In the Sephardic world, there was an importance attached to uninterrupted tradition. Continuity with an earlier classical past served as the basis for Sephardic legitimacy.46 Ashkenazic narratives, however, were focused on discontinuity in the community brought about by migration and trauma. Marcus writes that the Ashkenazic texts seem to emerge especially at times when communal status is in decline, in comparison with an earlier time. The occasion for writing down a narrative about the past is not idle curiosity or

42 Robert (Reuven) Bonfil, How Golden was the Age of the Renaissance in Jewish Historiography? History and Theory 27 (1988): 78102, here at pp. 93, 95.

43 Ibid., p. 101.44 See David N. Myers, Remembering Zakhor: A Super-Commentary, History and

Memory 2 (1992): 12946. Myers contests Funkensteins position, and asks whether halakhic[legal] innovation requires in and of itself historical consciousness, beyond a highly selective, perhaps hagiographic, recitation of ones favorite scholarly antecedents (p. 132). Myers maintains that Funkenstein provides no cogent explanation of a conceptual category for historical consciousness, which is intended to mediate collective memory and critical historical study (p. 133).

45 Ivan Marcus, History, Story and Collective Memory: Narrativity in Early Ashkenazic Culture, Prooftexts 10 (1990): 36588, here at p. 379. This distinction is related to the important, if over-extended, theory of Gershon Cohen, regarding the differences between Sephardic and Ashkenazic culture. Cohen argues for the notion that Ashkenazic writing reveals submissiveness and acceptance of divine decrees, until God intervenes in history and restores His people. See Gershon Cohen, Messianic Postures of Ashkenazim and Sephardim, [reprinted] in Marc Saperstein (ed.), Essential Papers on Messianic Movements and Personalities in Jewish History (New York, 1992), pp. 20233, here at p. 220. On the other hand, Cohen argues that Sephardic writing reveals political success and confidence in its own powers (p. 222).

46 Marcus, History, Story, and Collective Memory, p. 381. In this context, it might be interesting to consider the attitude toward Sephardic sources; see Eric Zimmer, Fiery Embers of the Scholars: The Trials and Tribulations of German Rabbis in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Jerusalem, 1999) [Hebrew], regarding the debate over the use of Sephardic sources in early modern Germany.


even family pride or community self-respect but a perceived change or loss. In a sophisticated application of this observation, he argues that, the emphasis in the Ashkenazic narratives on the story of the changing holy community makes the remembered changes in the life of the community comparable to a dense, partially obscure, sacred text that requires interpretation.47

Marcus assumes and then elaborates upon perceived distinctions between Ashkenazic and Sephardic culture and literary production. Working from this bifurcated model, Marcus asserts that Ashkenazic narratives were produced in response to crisis and decline. However, it is worth asking to what extent we can, or should, distinguish between Ashkenazic, and more specifically German, narratives and Sephardic narratives. Recent scholarship has indicated that differences may not have been as great as once perceived. In addition, the early modern period in Germany, just like the medieval, is clearly one that is much too complex to be denoted simply as one of crisis and decline. In fact, in some areas such as Hamburg, Prague, and Frankfurt am Main, one might more appropriately label the period one of rebirth and reintegration.

Furthering the perceived differences in Ashkenazic and Sephardic experiences, Marcuss position assumes that it is the Sephardim, because of their political audacity, and to some important extent political success, who used history for political purposesto secure, legitimize, and challenge. But did Ashkenazic, specifically German Jewish, histories and memories simply retreat into a world of insulated religious segregation and passive waiting for divine intervention and salvation? Might we be able to detect instances when German Jews confronted, and co-opted, the past for other purposes than simply to lick their wounds and strengthen themselves through the hope, and expectation, of better days? Here, I take Marcus quite seriously when he suggests that Ashkenazic memory may tell us a good deal about broader social orientations and concerns; it is simply that I begin without the presupposition that early modern Ashkenazic Jews were necessarily apolitical or un-engaged from the social, intellectual, and cultural streams in which they circulated and lived. In the chapters that follow, I will consider the extent to which narratives of the past can tell us about the nature of Jewish community and identity in early modern Germany, as well as how the actual condition of that Jewish community (those Jewish communities?) and the more general conditions of early modern Germany helped to shape such memories.

The broader scholarly tradition from which Yerushalmi simultaneously drew and contributed has also generated significant response in recent years. The concepts forwarded by Halbwachs have been highly influential and much adapted, as in the work of Nora and some of his colleagues. Some recent scholarship has confirmed elements of Halbwachss argument, while other scholarship has refined, criticized, or even dismissed aspects of it. Amos Funkenstein, for example, had reservations about Halbwachss notion of collective memory, even while conceding that collective memory is not a mistaken or misleading term.48 Funkenstein concluded that while memory can constitute self-consciousness, because self-identity presumes

47 Marcus, History, Story, and Collective Memory, p. 381.48 Funkenstein, Perceptions of Jewish History, p. 4.


memory, it also cannot be removed from its social context.49 Indeed, collective memory provides the systems of signs, symbols, and practices which instantiate individual memory.50

A good deal of recent scholarship has refined our understanding of memory and at the same time confirmed some of Halbwachss conclusions. Memory, it has been noted, consists of various components. It is changeable and subject to differing interpretations. Memories can take on different meanings in different contexts.51

Personal memories are culled from our perceptions. But these perceptions enter the consciousness, where they combine with other memories that then affect and transform them.52 Perceptions are affected by a variety of physical, psychological, and social factors. Memories, therefore, are constructs that take the raw data of these perceptions and reconstruct them into a broader context of knowledge and experience. Indeed, modern studies on memory have noted that the process of recollection is not an exact one of information retrieval but rather one in which memories are put together from fragmented sources, often in a simplified form, according to pre-existing patterns. Remembering is a creative activity in which the past is constantly updated according to the requirements of the present.53 Individual memories contribute to and are influenced by collective memories; the development of shared identity requires that individuals identify and agree on certain memories.54

There are of course also collective memories, some of which the individual him- or herself may never have experienced. Such collective memories at times seem to dictate beliefs and the rules of proper behavior.55

The apparent opposition of memory and history has received particular attention in recent scholarship. In his recent work on history and memory after Auschwitz, for example, Dominick LaCapra has criticized the underlying distinction between memory and history posited by Halbwachs and Nora. According to LaCapra, memory and history are clearly not the same, but they are equally clearly not the opposite either. Memory, LaCapra writes, is a crucial source for history and has

49 Ibid.50 Ibid., p. 6.51 James Olney, Memory and Narrative: The Weave of Life-Writing (Chicago, 1998), p. 64.52 Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture

(Cambridge, 1990), p. 339.53 Catherine Cubitt, Memory and Narrative in the Cult of Early Anglo-Saxon Saints,

in Yitzhak Hen and Matthew Innes (eds), The Uses of the Past in the Early Middle Ages(Cambridge, 2000), pp. 2966, here at p. 31.

54 Ibid. See also Yerushalmi, Zakhor, p. xv, citing the work of Halbwachs.55 Walter Pohl, Memory, Identity and Power in Lombard Italy, in Hen and Innes

(eds), The Uses of the Past in the Early Middle Ages, pp. 928, here at p. 10. Regarding the imitation of saints lives, for example, see Cubit, Memory and Narrative, pp. 335. Although testaments of those who were not clergy or noblemen are harder to find north of the Alps before the fifteenth century, such models did serve important roles for the lay and lower orders. See Samuel K. Cohn, Jr., The Place of the Dead in Flanders and Tuscany: Towards a Comparative History of the Black Death, in Bruce Gordon and Peter Marshall (eds), The Place of the Dead: Death and Remembrance in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe(Cambridge, 2000), pp. 1743, here at p. 24.


complicated relations to documentary sources. Even in its falsifications, repressions, displacements, and denials, memory may nonetheless be informativenot in terms of an accurate empirical representation of its object but in terms of that objects often anxiety-ridden reception and assimilation by both participants in events and those born later.56 Critically informed memory assists in determining what in history should be preserved in living tradition and history serves to test memory critically. LaCapra concludes that In the foregoing respects one might contend that history and memory have a supplementary relation that is a basis for mutually questioning interaction or open dialectical exchange that never attains totalization or full closure. Memory is both more and less than history, and vice-versa .57

Keith Baker has similarly contested several aspects of Halbwachss conception of memory and history. First, he notes that Halbwachs suggests that history is written whereas memory is not, so that the past moves from memory into history only when it leaves the living consciousness of social actors.58 But, does writing down the past necessarily change or distance it?59 Second, Baker believes that Halbwachs assumes that history is a specialized discipline external to and above groups. Baker, however, contends that such a view ignores the close relationship between the historian and the social and political milieu in which he writes, especially in periods before the creation of an organized historical profession.60 In Bakers early modernityhe focuses on the period of and leading up to the French Revolutionthe historian as recorder of events is not detached from, indeed is often centrally located in relation to the events around him. The historian is affected by events while also affecting them at the same time.

Finally, Baker also dismisses the idea that memory and history exist in a relationship that is purely oppositional. Noting that the past is not always peaceably shed and that numerous collective memories interact with each other, Baker asserts that the relationship between memory and history does not have to be irreversible. History can again become memory, as the past is redefined. The opposition between memory and history, Baker concludes, appears to be less a simple dichotomy than a constantly shifting, dialectical relationship. History is memory contested; memory is history controlled and fixed.61

56 Dominick LaCapra, History and Memory After Auschwitz (Ithaca, 1998), p. 19.57 Ibid., p. 20.58 Keith Baker, Inventing the French Revolution: Essays on French Political Culture in

the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1990), p. 55.59 Ibid.; see also Patrick H. Hutton, History as an Art of Memory (Hanover, NH,

1993).60 Baker, Inventing the French Revolution, p. 55.61 Ibid., p. 56. On the interconnectedness of history and memory, see Hutton, History

as an Art of Memory, p. 77. See also David N. Myers, Between Diaspora and Zion: History, Memory, and the Jerusalem Scholars in David N. Myers and David B. Ruderman (eds), The Jewish Past Revisited: Reflections on Modern Jewish Historians (New Haven, 1998), pp. 88103, here at p. 89: Rather, I would like to suggest that the categories of history and memory, often cast as irreparably detached from one another, may indeed be closer to one another than we often tend to think, that they may inhabit a continuum of attitudes toward the past .


At the heart of Bakers analysis is the assertion that the representation of the past plays an important role in the power struggles of the present. Baker contends that accepted understandings of the events and of the implications of the past constantly become subject to contestation, as social actors draw upon the powerful resources that these understandings offer in the service of competing claims. He writes that History, then, becomes the domain, not of discarded memory, but of disputed memory. It does not succeed to memory by an automatic social process; on the contrary, it challenges and subverts memory, bringing into contestation what was previously regarded as fixed.

In a criticism that is particularly meaningful for this study, Baker concludes that the different analytical categories ascribed by Halbwachs to memory and history appear more clearly as opposing discursive strategies within a continuing competition to control the symbolic meaning of the past than as expressions of entirely different forms of social consciousness.62 This emphasis on the competition to control the symbolic meaning of the past, with the power to craft new identity and to transform and reinforce collective identity and social order, underpins both memory and history, and in a sense makes the distinction between the two somewhat irrelevant. 63

A similar conclusionif arrived at through very different means and with somewhat different assumptionsis posited by some postmodern historians, who have also been concerned with the relationship between memory, political power, and propaganda. 64

Value of the past, in this scheme, is related to its utility for control of power in the present.65 According to this approach, there is an important connection between the repetition and use of specific memories and the construction and maintenance of power within society.66 In surveying the postmodern literature, Patrick Hutton notes that, the most powerful group takes possession of the past by crowding out the traditions of its competitors or by reshaping them to conform to its own conceptions.67

62 Baker, Inventing the French Revolution, p. 57.63 Pierre Nora also considers the confrontations between groups in flux that lead to the

sacralization of memory. But his approach fixes these changes within the realm of memory, avoiding the continuum stressed by Baker. Nora contends that, the social uses of memory are as diverse and varied as the rationales of identity. But the mechanisms involved as well as the reasons for the sacralization of memory are always the same: confrontations between groups subject to constant change and consolidated through constant revival of the memories on which their identities are based (Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, p. 636). See Patrick J. Gearys Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium(Princeton, 1994), pp. 1011, where Geary argues that Halbwachs failed to see the political parameters of collective memory formation, and assumed that collective memory was a natural, nonpurposeful creation of a group while history was an intentional, political and manipulative process. He thus postulated a fundamental opposition between the two. Geary cautions that It would be a serious mistake to think that this collection of memories is simply the sum total of what he had experienced, heard and read. Rather memory is an active and creative faculty, constantly selecting, interpreting, and transforming experience (p. 160).

64 Hutton, History as an Art of Memory, p. xv.65 Ibid., p. 6. Regarding Foucault, he writes that Rather than culling the past for residual

memories, each age reconstructs the past with images that suit its present needs The reality of the past, he maintained, resides in the artifacts of its representation.

66 Ibid, p. 7.67 Ibid., p. 128.


The memory related to tradition, therefore, has been seen as an important vehicle both to preserve as well as to modify the social frameworks of memory over time, and the defenders of tradition are likely to buttress its places of memory through acts of commemoration.68 The work of Eric Hobsbawm has been especially meaningful in this regard.69 Hobsbawm distinguishes between customwhat judges doand traditionthe formal paraphernalia and ritualized practices surrounding their substantial action.70 The invention of traditions, Hobsbawm argues, is much more frequent when a rapid transformation of society weakens or destroys the social patterns for which the old traditions had been designed, producing new ones to which they were not applicable, or when such old traditions and their institutional carriers and promulgators no longer prove sufficiently adaptable and flexible, or are otherwise eliminated .71 In the period since the industrial revolution, Hobsbawm asserts that invented traditions belong to three overlapping types, those that seek to establish or symbolize social cohesion or the membership of groups (real or artificial communities); establish or legitimize institutions, status, or relations of authority; and socialize, or inculcate beliefs, value systems, or behavior.72 So, the nature as well as the mode of commemoration is important in power relations and identification. This study asks whether such uses of tradition were employed in the early modern period, and if so, with what implications?

In sum, the theoretical discussions reveal that constructing, maintaining, and contesting the past may often go hand in hand and can have significant implications for internal communal structures and identity as well as the place of the community within a broader external environment. Indeed, as the historian Constantin Fasolt has argued recently, history is a form of self-assertion.73 Memory has great power in crafting group or social identity as well as in challenging the established orderit can be a means of separation or continuity.74 The continuum of memory and history reflects a powerful tool that can be utilized in both the conscious and unconscious narration of the past. It can be a formative influence or a descriptive one, revealing to us a great deal about the community or society in question. While memory can be shaped by cultural values and experiences, it can simultaneously create culture and social value and extend them into the future.

The past, it seems, never exists in isolation. It is linked in a complex and dynamic relationship with the present, and through the present to the future as well. Identity may be formed through the active engagement with and continuation of the past, or

68 Ibid., p. 79. 69 See Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge,

1983).70 Ibid., pp. 23.71 Ibid., pp. 45.72 Ibid., p. 9.73 Constantin Fasolt, The Limits of History (Chicago, 2004), p. 230.74 The narratives forged through memory, can, in fact, come to shape the identity of

an entire society (see the Matthew Innes, Introduction: Using the Past, Investigating the Present, Influencing the Future, in Hen and Innes (eds), The Uses of the Past in the Early Middle Ages, pp. 18, here at p. 5).


through a more radical reinterpretation and separation from the past.75 According to one recent historian,

human life is never simply lived in the present alone but rather in three worlds: one that is, one that was, and one that will be. In theory we know these three worlds as separate concepts but we experience them as inextricably linked and as influencing each other in many ways. Every important new discovery about the past changes how we think about the present and what we expect of the future; on the other hand every change in the conditions of the present and in the expectations for the future revise our perception of the past 76

History, in this interpretation, engages the past while simultaneously trying to separate the present society from that past.77

Memory and History in the Middle Ages

Do these theoretical conclusions resonate in what we know about the Middle Ages? In the Middle Ages the past was narrated and gained meaning through both memory and history. But what did memory and history mean in the Middle Ages?

Already in the early Middle Ages, Augustine had noted that the past is the remembered present, just as the future is the anticipated present: memory is always derived from the present and from the contents of the soul at present.78 Memory in the Middle Ages as today was multivalent and its meaning closely connected with the form of its expression.79 When Augustine used the verb contexto, to weave together, he referred simultaneously to memory and narrative.80

And what of the concept of history in the Middle Ages? Since Antiquity history in the West was not a formal discipline in and of itself. It was originally a part of rhetoric, the art of persuasion in writing and speech.81 It also served at times as a form

75 According to one critical theorist, In this way it [modern western history] is unlike tradition (religious tradition), though it never succeeds in being entirely dissociated from this archaeology, maintaining with it a relation of indebtedness and rejection (Michel de Certeau, The Writing of History, trans. Tom Conley (New York, 1988; orig., 1975), pp. 23; see also p. 37).

76 Ernst Breisach, Historiography: Ancient, Medieval and Modern (2nd edition, Chicago, 1994 (orig., 1983)), p. 2.

77 De Certeau, The Writing of History, p. 37.78 Funkenstein, Perceptions of Jewish History, p. 7.79 Jrn Rsen notes that the border between chronology and historiography is fluid; he

argues that chronology is a proto-history. See Jrn Rsen, Die vier Typen des historischen Erzhlens, in Reinhart Kosseleck, Heinrich Lutz, and Jrn Rsen (eds), Formen der Geschichtsschreibung (Munich, 1982), pp. 514605, here at p. 544. Rsen isolates four different types of narratives: traditional narratives (inherited from fathers) (p. 545); exemplary narratives (p. 547); critical narratives (opposed to tradition; weapons used in the battle against the memory of a symbol) (p. 551); and, genetic narratives (structural changes of a system) (p. 555). Indeed, the act of narration is significant, whether or not that narration is formal or modern historiography or not.

80 Olney, Memory and Narrative, p. 20.81 Beryl Smalley, Historians in the Middle Ages (New York, 1974), p. 15.


of ethics, as it did for Sallust,82 or it might be akin to biography,83 often beginning with a recounting of the authors own personal experiences.84 It was only in biblical exegesis that historia had a special meaning, there as a literal understanding of Scripture.85

Medieval historians were thus not historians in the professional sense that we imagine them today,86 rather they were chroniclers and registers, who believed that the past was valuable as a means of instruction.87 According to the German historian Johannes Aventinus (14771534), for example: For in the old histories as in a mirror, one views the life of the other and therefore takes from the other an image, to be reminded what he should do or allow, what is in evil or good.88 The connection between the value of the past and behavior and knowledge of the present was frequently maintained.

Although some historians have been careful to stress the continuity of historical inquiry, even through the Renaissance,89 others have noted the important developments of the later Middle Ages, and even the work of the medieval scholastics in the creation of greater systematization and the production of new historical-moral works.90 In the later Middle Ages, it has been argued, history increasingly functioned as a guarantee, a centrum securitatis, of the continued life of the individual and the community.91 In discussing the motives for the work of the late medieval German town chronicles, F.R.H. Du Boulay articulates various purposes that could exist alone or in any combination, motives that revolve around issues of politics, personal need, and professional employment. Late medieval town chronicles might furnish memorials of a leading family; record the ceremonial reception of kings; keep reports on feuds and wars, which the town engaged against external enemies; chronicle internal rebellions; and allow for the authors own gratification, reward, or commission.92

82 Ibid., p. 19.83 Ibid., p. 21.84 Ibid., p. 24.85 Herbert Grundmann, Geschichtsschreibung im Mittelaler: GattungenEpochen

Eigenart (Gttingen, 1965), p. 5.86 Frantiek Graus, Funktionen der sptmittelalterlichen Geschichtsschreibung, in

Hans Patze (ed.), Geschichtschreibung und Geschichtsbewusstsein im spten Mittelalter(Sigmaringen, 1987), pp. 1155, here at p. 13.

87 Ibid., p. 18.88 Ibid., p. 19. 89 Frantiek Graus, II. Zusammenfassung der Tagung Oktober 1981, in Patze (ed.),

Geschichtschreibung und Geschichtsbewusstsein im spten Mittelalter, pp. 83845, here at p. 840, where he argues that there was no radical break between chronicling and historical writing in the old sense and the so-called humanistic historiography.

90 Hans Patze, Zusammenfassungen: I. Zusammenfassung der Tagungen Oktober 1980 und Oktober 1982, in Patze (ed.), Geschichtschreibung und Geschichtsbewusstsein im spten Mittelalter, pp. 82138, here at pp. 824, 835.

91 Graus, Funktionen der sptmittelalterlichen Geschichtsschreibung, p. 55.92 F.R.H. Du Boulay, The German Town Chroniclers, in R.H.C. Davis and J.M.

Wallace-Hadrill (eds), The Writing of History in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to Richard William Southern (Oxford, 1981), pp. 44569, here pp. 4489.


History was very fluid in the Middle Ages, and could be expressed in a variety of literary genres.93 As with memory, the very narration of the past could be an active tool in political propaganda,94 and in many lands in the later Middle Ages one can find a noticeable increase in the social and political uses of historiography.95

In the midst of revolts or other crises, for example, an ideal and lost past might be promoted or castigated96 and the past itself might be suborned as a witness to the truth.97 Throughout the Middle Ages history could serve as a means of legitimization, interchanging good and old law,98 noting the good old time and so constructing social order,99 or illustrating the authority of God.100

History, as the recalling of both memory and tradition, could serve as a means to legitimate or defend authority.101 The process of writing history might argue for legitimate knowledge, and such knowledge could form a self-defining center.102

Histories, therefore, were (and continue to be) powerful tools that mediate relationships and define identities.103 Historiansas creators and re-tellers of the narrativethemselves could become brokers of power,104 a particularly intriguing concept with the dramatic changes in Western Europe in the early modern period

93 Graus, Funktionen der sptmittelalterlichen Geschichtsschreibung, pp. 256.94 Ibid., pp. 289.95 Ibid., p. 33.96 Ibid., p. 34; others have also seen the birth of historiography in the fifteenth century.

See, for example, Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken, Die Rezeption mittelalterliche Historiographie durch den Inkunabeldruck, in Patze (ed.), Geschichtsschreibung und Geschichtsbewusstsein im spten Mittelalter, pp. 21536, where it is argued that historiography first appeared in the last third of the fifteenth century.

97 Graus, Funktionen der sptmittelalterlichen Geschichtsschreibung, p. 54.98 Ibid., p. 23.99 Ibid., p. 31.100 Ibid., p. 24.101 Leah Shopkow, History and Community: Norman Historical Writing in the Eleventh

and Twelfth Centuries (Washington, 1997), p. 253.102 De Certeau, The Writing of History, p. 127. For Michel de Certeau, narration is

the art of speaking as an art of operating and of thinking; as such, it includes both practice and theory. That is to say, that ways of operating designate activities but also organize construction. Narration therefore is different than mere description. The act of narration has more meaning than the actual object or end point that the narration completes. For de Certeau, there also exists a contextual network of messages and operations; knowledge is a memory, with many different moments and heterogeneous elements. The very duration of that knowledge and the retelling of that knowledge intercede and change those moments and elements. See also his The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley, 1984). Some historians have, nevertheless, maintained that it is in fact possible to discern true from false narrative, and, consequently that history both represents facts and participates in making them. Nevertheless, historians themselves make history by deciding what to record and what to ignore (Funkenstein, Perceptions of Jewish History, pp. 30ff).

103 Histories reflected political relationships of various kinds, including relationships between institutions, between institutions and their communities, and between rulers and their subjects (Shopkow, History and Community, p. 258).

104 See de Certeau, The Writing of History, p. 7.


territorialization, the creation of the centralized state, the scientific development of disciplines of knowledge,105 and the crisis of authority, for example.

In order to speak of a real historical tradition, Frantiek Graus stipulates three requirements: the narrative in the past is projected and is somehow relevant for the presentcuriosities do not found a tradition; the narrative must be differentiated from folklore; and the narrative must be passed over a certain period from generation to generation orally or in written form. Graus has asserted, however, that a simple consciousness of the past, which appears in different forms, is older than all chronological historical writing. This consciousness may be clothed in mythic forms and report on the beginning of time. It serves fundamentally to bind the members of a society (Gemeinschaft), through a common past.106

The process of narrating memory and history could lead to moralizing, since the narratives require a system within which to be understood.107 But narratives of the past could also be moral in a different, broader sense as well. They involve the ethics of selecting and re-presenting the past. In describing Norman historical writing in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Leah Shopkow notes that in the process of writing a history, the historian decided not only what ought to be remembered but also structured how the material was to be remembered, offering as a substitute for personal, social, and self-referential memories external and abstract written accounts. Therefore, as the medievalist Brian Stock notes, historical writing does not treat reality; it treats the interpreters relation to it.108 The historian is involved in the process of creating as much as the facts and texts are,109 and as such, the producthistorical writingis thus an apologetic whose moral is coherence.110

Memory itself becomes moral, and so has the power to define proper behavior and to focus on the (ideal) qualities that identify a group.111

Conclusion

As we have seen, in theoretical discussions as well as actual application in the Middle Ages, narration of the past could take different forms and serve a wide range of purposes. Whether couched as memory or more formal history, engagement with the past could be a powerful tool for locating authority (to challenge or uphold it), mediating relationships, and dictating proper behavior. As such, the remembering and use of the past played a central role in the formation, identity, and even transformation of communities. What is more, the narrators of the past themselves

105 Ibid., p. 60.106 Frantiek Graus, Lebendige Vergangenheit: berlieferung im Mittelaletr und in den

Vorstellungen vom Mittelalter (Cologne, 1975), p. 1.107 Consider Hayden White, for example, as discussed in Cubit, Memory and Narrative,

p. 48. 108 Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of

Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton, 1983), p. 80.109 Ibid., p. 83.110 Ibid., p. 84.111 See Shopkow, History and Community, p. 257.


served an important function in both recording and structuring community as well as internal and external communal relations. While early modern Jewish communities are generally seen as somehow traditional and religious and often simplistic in their understanding and use of the past, we now ask whether early modern German Jews narrated the past, through memory or history, for more sophisticated purposes than simply religious ritual.

Chapter 2

Reconsidering Early Modern German Jewish Memory and History1

Paradigms in Jewish Memory

Traditionally, scholars have found pre-modern Jewish memory to be paradigmatic rather than historical. Jacob Neusner, for example, has asserted that time telling in classical Judaism made no distinction between past and present, utilizing paradigmatic modes of thought rather than historical ones.2 He concluded that Jews were indifferent to the specifics of context3 and that the Judaism of the dual Torah transforms ancient Israels history into the categorical structure of eternal Israels society, so that past, present, and future meet in the here and now.4

Similar conclusions have been drawn for medieval Jewish literary production. Regarding Abraham Ibn Dauds (c.11101180) tale of four rabbis taken captive by a Muslim sea raider, for example, Gerson Cohen argued that the tale is not a historical account, but rather a homily, a romance with a moral. It was meant to be consolation for Jews, and it relied heavily on a symmetry in which historical reckoning is imprecise and history conforms to a set pattern.5

Likewise, in examining Hebrew narratives of the 1096 crusade riots, Ivan Marcus contended that, The events actually reported qualify for inclusion only when they fit the narrators preconceived religious-literary schema. Medieval chronicles are, in this sense, fictions: imaginative re-orderings of experience within a cultural framework

1 For a very concise and good treatment of Jewish approaches to history in general, see Jay R. Berkovitz, Does Jewish History Repeat Itself? Paradigm, Myth and Tradition, in Dean Phillip Bell (ed.), The Solomon Goldman Lectures, vol. VII (Chicago, 1999), pp. 13153.

2 Jacob Neusner, History, Time, and Paradigm in Classical Judaism, in Approaches to Ancient Judaism, Volume XVI, pp. 189211, here at pp. 18990.

3 Ibid., p. 190.4 Ibid., p. 192.5 Gerson Cohen, The Story of the Four Captives, Proceedings of the American

Academy for Jewish Research 29 (196061): 70123, here at p. 95. Cohen writes that, It is a remarkable fact that virtually no modern scholar has taken seriously Ibn Dauds repeated contention that history is not a mere record of past events, but essentially a source of consolation for the Jew. Cohen notes the importance of symmetry in Ibn Dauds account (overriding biblical passages or historical information) (p. 101); that rough correspondence is sufficient (p. 102); that history is always shown to conform to a pattern (p. 105); and that the reckoning of time is rather vague and imprecise, as when the text notes that 4750 a bit more or less (p. 108) or when years serve as allusions (p. 111).


and system of symbols.6 The accounts were preoccupied with eschatology,7 were as liturgical as they were chronological,8 and utilized central paradigms placed into new situations: Mainz became Jerusalem, for example, as Speyer became Yavneh.9 Indeed, in their approach to pre-modern Jewish memory, most scholars assume that pre-modern Judaism and Jews were a religious and homogenous group.10 Traditional and religious sensibilityoften catchwords for subjective and non-criticalis therefore seen as fundamental to any Jewish engagement with the past. The consequences are that pre-modern Judaism is often seen to be unable or unwilling to differentiate modes of temporality, especially past and present, and to be able to understand the past merely in religious ways, primarily through paradigms created in biblical or talmudic texts or the paradigm of causality expressed through the motif of sin and repentance. It is worth reconsidering these assumptions. Given the function of narrations of the past in the Middle Ages and more generally that we saw in the first chapter, what can we say about Jewish memory and history in early modern Germany?

Early Modern Paradigms: Sin and Penance as Causal Explanations

For Jews, as for their medieval and early modern Christian counterparts, historical events were often seen to follow a particular pattern. The present was understandable within the context of tried and true typologies, or else seen to comport to some divine plan hatched at the time of creation and discernible through various means of biblical interpretation. The paradigm of four world empires that would rise and fall in succession before an expected messianic culmination, for example, was frequently espoused and described. Such a model made the unfolding of history and the ongoing suffering of the Jews understandable, and at times reassuring. The paradigm of the four world empires was not limited to Jewish writers and thinkers and it was still a marvelously powerful tool of interpretation and historical organization even when criticized by early modern Germans. Such an approach seemed to make history disposable and the past understandable only by recourse to theological models and considerations.

There were other standard theological ways in which Jews attempted to understand the defeats and victories of the past and present. Early modern Jews, like their Christian contemporaries, traded in an economy of sin, in which various misfortunes were attributed to sin and eventual salvation to sincere repentance.11

6 Ivan Marcus, From Politics to Martyrdom: Shifting Paradigms in the Hebrew Narratives of the 1096 Crusade Riots, Prooftexts 2 (1982): 4052, here at p. 42.

7 Ibid., p. 45.8 Ibid., p. 42.9 Ibid., pp. 49, 51.10 Jewish feminists have offered a critique of this assumption. See, for example, Judith

Plaskow, Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective (San Francisco, 1991).11 See the general literature in the recent work on natural disaster in the early modern

period. In particular, the concept of an economy of sin, is discussed in Wolfgang Behringer, Kleine Eiszeit und Frhe Neuzeit, in Wolfgang Behringer, Hartmut Lehmann, and

Reconsidering Early Modern German Jewish Memory and History 21

Such an economy took on added significance within the context of various discussions about the power of God and the unique position of Gods chosen people, the Jews. The important early modern legal authority, Yair Hayyim Bacharach, for example, utilized fairly traditional language when, in his introduction to Mekor Hayyim, he noted that Because of our sins our city of Worms was destroyed in 5449, 13 of Sivan [1 June, 1689, by the French army].12 Of the same event, he wrote in his Havot Yair, that In the course of time there came upon us a year of curses. In 5449, 13 of Sivan our city was destroyed and because of our great sins our Beit-ha-Mikdash, our small synagogue, was desolate. The residents of our holy congregation [of Worms] left in terror and became wanderers and roamers. The description of the destruction mirrored in microcosm the more general and grander history of the destruction of the Temple and the dispersion of the Jews, while linking the event with Jewish sins.

In confronting the hostilities of the Fettmilch uprising in early seventeenth-century Frankfurt, the author of the Megillat Vintz, a recounting cast into a rather traditional Purim tale, similarly drew a direct line of causality between sin and suffering. How great must have been our sins, he reflected, even if we did not want to admit it.13 He pointed out that many overwhelming disasters had befallen our community up until that time. For eight or nine years we had not slept peacefully. But the underlying explanation was sin: The cause of all this was our great sins, revealed or hidden. God, Blessed be He, has directed us that we should act with care. And this is the duty of each one of us Therefore, we shall turn away from our evil ways. The miracles and wonders shall not be forgotten.14

In stressing the relation between perceived sin and tragedy, an early seventeenth-century anonymous Prague chronicle ran through a litany of cause and effect statements, positing specific community events, such as expulsions and fires in the Jewish street, as the result of community sins. 1559 Due to our iniquities, there was a fire in the Judenstrasse here in Prague, in which seventy-two houses were consumed by the flames, as well as the Hochschul [college, referring to a yeshiva?]. This occurred on the 17th of Tammuz [a traditional day of fasting and mourning; in that year on 22 June]. A woman named Friedel Niches perished in the fire as well, due to our iniquities.15 In part, the purpose of such recounting was to serve as a memory for the future. The Prague chronicler simply explained that I shall recount the events occurring in the Exile subsequent to the fifth millennium: the expulsions, miracles, and news of other occurrences befalling [the Jews] in Prague and the other lands of our long exile because of our iniquities, to serve as a token of remembrance

Christian Pfister (eds), Kulturelle Konsequenzen der Kleinen Eiszeit (Gttingen, 2005), pp. 415508, here at pp. 4667.

12 Shlomo Eidelberg, Medieval Ashkenazic History: Studies on German Jewry in the Middle Ages, Volume I English Essays (New York, 1999), p. 168.

13 Rivka Ulmer, Turmoil, Trauma and Triumph: The Fettmilch Uprising in Frankfurt am Main (16121616) According to Megillas Vintz (Frankfurt am Main, 2001), p. 127.

14 Ibid., p. 197.15 Abraham David (ed.), A Hebrew Chronicle from Prague, c. 1615, trans. Leon J.

Weinberger with Dena Ordan (Tuscaloosa, 1993), pp. 467.


for us and our descendants forever.16 The re-telling of specifics, however, might also serve as something of a communal record akin to a ledger.

Conversely, salvation in many early modern Jewish narratives was generally attributed to Jewish penance and prayer. According to the Megillat Vintz, for example, we trusted in Him, Blessed be He. He turned them away because we trusted in His holy and eternal name. We repented and afflicted ourselves with fasting and prayer. We thought we could avert the harsh, Divine decree and our great troubles.17 The causal relationship between Jewish spiritual action and political deliverance was seen as direct. It was God who saved the Jews from their troubles, but only after Jewish prayer and repentance. Moralizing was, therefore, intimately connected with the narratives of the past that sought to explain both tragedy and redemption.18

Beyond the Use of Paradigms

Throughout the early modern narratives, the language of our sins was common and rather formulaic.19 But should the frequent invocation of causality between sin and tragedy and repentance and deliverance be taken purely literally? Did Jews ascribe salvation only to divine intervention? Was there room for other explanations of past events? Was the causal relationship different in different Jewish narratives or in different contexts? The seventeenth-century Prague rabbi Yom-Tov Lipman Heller, for example, in describing the 1648 Chmielnicki massacres did not see the massacres only as punishment for perceived Jewish sins, but rather attributed them largely to contemporary political conditions. Indeed, as his writings make clear, Heller did not maintain an ahistorical concept of Jewish suffering.20 Was this a view shared by other early modern Jews?

Even when paradigms were the primary explanatory discourse, it is not enough to say that the use of paradigms or traditional narration of the past implied that early modern Jews were only religious or simply static. In what follows we will see that paradigms could be used both to initiate and suppress change. Paradigms could have varying levels of meaning and applicationlocal, regional, national, and even

16 Ibid., p. 21.17 Ulmer, Turmoil, Trauma and Triumph, p. 113.18 In a sense, the events of the past had the capacity to reflect and renew the eternal and

ongoing covenant between God and His people. The power of God could at times, however, be activated for the assistance of the Jews, even without Jewish action. The anonymous Prague chronicle reported that the King allowed the expelled Jews to return, with the help of God, and did not mention Jewish penance: 5301 [1541] King Ferdinand, may he be exalted, expelled [the Jews] from all the cities of Bohemia, and here in Prague only ten [Jewish] householders remained. Subsequently, he allowed them to return, with the help of God. (David (ed.), A Hebrew Chronicle from Prague, pp. 445) The actions of the Jews mattered little in this case, since the King was apparently divinely inspired to allow the Jews back into his realm.

19 See, for example, the note by Abraham David regarding the language in the anonymous Prague Chronicle, which he argues is not intended to be literal (ibid., p. 21).

20 See Joseph Davis, Yom-Tov Lipman Heller: Portrait of a Seventeenth-Century Rabbi(Oxford, 2004), pp. 11, 13. See also pp. 14651 for examples from Hellers Megilat eivah.

Reconsidering Early Modern German Jewish Memory and History 23

universal. Paradigms could be employed for a variety of purposes and in numerous contexts that belie simple or unwavering engagement with the past.

When the community ledgers of the Prague community stressed that our sins have led to recent misfortunes, such emphasis did not have to be read only as a paradigmatic understanding of the past, with suffering as the divine punishment for sin. The mention of sins, in this case, provided a current means for moral upbraiding and the reinforcement of old, or the introduction of new, laws. According to one part of the ledger:

And here, in the month of Tishri 372, by the shorter calculation [1611], we have gathered together to review what is happening within our holy community. For several days now we have observed a great number of misfortunes around us, as well as terrible dread, the most recent being lives cut sort. For a considerable number of people and children, boys and girls, have died, and they say that surely our sins have brought this upon us. Perhaps there are hidden sins, and we have decided in Gods name, and so that He may relent and take pity on those of us who remain and heal our dear ones it has thus been decided with the consent of our holy community, to issue a law that must be respected by all those within the gates of our town who must observe it down to its precise details, which will be clarified below.21

While the document clearly posited the relationship between misfortune and sin, it also afforded the opportunity to initiate significant changes in communal legislation.

At times, it was, in fact, the present and current social and political conditions that themselves gave meaning to the past! Throughout many of the narratives examined here, the past was utilized as a means to legitimate current practices or lobby for changes. The Frankfurt community minutes provide an excellent example. There it was recorded: In the year (5)302 [1542], the heads of the people together with the scholars and the leaders of Germany assembled at Worms to correct the state of affai

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